


The Cliffs of Brighton Rock

by Edonohana



Category: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - All Media Types, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-05 01:53:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15853827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/pseuds/Edonohana
Summary: As Charlie reached out for a button, he read the labels closest to his outstretched hand.VANISHMINTS - FOR THE TIMES WHEN YOU JUST WANT TO TAKE YOUR CANDY AND DISAPPEAR.LIPSTICK LOLLIES THAT TURN YOUR LIPS BRIGHT RED ALL DAY.REALISTIC SCAMPERING SUGAR MICE FOR YOUR CATS OR YOU.





	The Cliffs of Brighton Rock

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ysavvryl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ysavvryl/gifts).



“Where would you like to go now?” Mr. Wonka asked. 

But Charlie Bucket was still too amazed at everything that had happened to reply. 

“The entire factory will be yours someday,” Mr. Wonka went on. “So you need to see it all! As soon as possible! I’d show you every room at the same time if I could, but unfortunately there are nine thousand, eight hundred, and forty-two rooms, not counting the corridors, the incinerator, the elevators, the elevator shafts, the bathrooms, and the room I tested the Invisible Intangible Are You Really Eating It Fudge in, and you only have eighteen eyes.”

Charlie didn’t like to contradict Mr. Wonka, but he politely said, “I have two eyes.”

Mr. Wonka peered at him, then said, “Nonsense! You have eighteen. Two in your head, and sixteen eyelets in your shoes, where your laces go in. If you practice for at least ten minutes twice a day, you can learn to see with all of them, and that saves ever so much time. Now then, Charlie, what would you like to see first?”

Charlie looked over the incredible array of buttons in the glass elevator. The sight was even more dizzying when he imagined also being able to see them through his shoelace holes. Though with two eyes, he still only saw one thing at a time, so maybe he wouldn’t notice the difference if he had even more of them.

“Go on!” Mr. Wonka said, hopping up and down in his polished black shoes. “Make a choice! Hurry! Quickly! Now!”

As Charlie reached out for a button, he read the labels closest to his outstretched hand.

VANISHMINTS - FOR THE TIMES WHEN YOU JUST WANT TO TAKE YOUR CANDY AND DISAPPEAR. 

LIPSTICK LOLLIES THAT TURN YOUR LIPS BRIGHT RED ALL DAY.

REALISTIC SCAMPERING SUGAR MICE FOR YOUR CATS OR YOU.

Then his finger touched a button labeled THE CLIFFS OF BRIGHTON ROCK. He pushed it. 

With a tremendous whizzing noise followed by a loud bang, the elevator leaped up, then sideways, then swerved around a corner. Charlie, who had learned his lesson from the last elevator trip, had already taken hold of a strap and didn’t fall over.

“An excellent choice!” Mr. Wonka shouted over the glass elevator’s whirring and whizzing and whanging. “Superb! Stupendous! Splendid! Sublime! And one of my personal favorites!”

As the glass elevator zipped along, Charlie caught a few glimpes of the rooms they were passing. 

A meadow of swudge, the minty sugar grass he had tasted below the chocolate waterfall, dotted with fairy rings of chocolate mushrooms with biscuit stems...

An intricate network of pipes full of bubbling sodas of every color, and one pipe where the soda changed color three times before he was whisked away…

Oompa-Loompa children skating on a pond iced over with rock sugar…

With an ear-splitting screech of brakes, the glass elevator came to a sudden stop. The door slid open. Mr. Wonka gracefully gestured to Charlie to step out. 

Looming before him were majestic rock candy cliffs, as tall and imposing as the pictures he’d seen of the White Cliffs of Dover. He’d seen sticks of Brighton Rock in candy stores, but he'd never imagined it could be this beautiful. The cliffs gleamed like polished gems, their striations not red and green and yellow and blue and white like the candy sticks, but ruby and emerald and topaz and sapphire and opal. 

Oompa-Loompas were working on the cliffs, hanging from rope harnesses to polish them, carving parts to create an elaborate cave system, and carting away chunks in shiny boats that looked like they were made of colored glass. 

Mr. Wonka led Charlie along the base of the cliffs. A delicious scent filled the air, sweet and minty. They walked along a sugar sand beach, admiring the Brighton Rock cliffs and the fizzy sea of snozzberry soda. After a while, the air grew colder and a light snow began to fall.

“Stick out your tongue!” Mr. Wonka said. “Catch a snowflake!”

Charlie did. The snow tasted like lemon ice, light and refreshing and melting away almost instantly on his tongue. 

“A small test, Charlie,” Mr. Wonka said suddenly. “Just to keep you on your toes. Tell me what the boats are made of.”

“They’re hollowed-out boiled sweets,” Charlie replied, remembering the glistening pink boat sailing down the chocolate river. 

“But what kind of boiled sweets?” asked Mr. Wonka. “There are a hundred kinds, you know. A thousand! A million! A chocotillion!”

“How many is a chocotillion?” Charlie asked.

“The number of cacao beans this factory uses in a year. Now stop stalling and identify the boiled sweet boats!”

Nervously, Charlie examined the boats. At first Mr. Wonka’s test seemed impossible. But then, when he looked at them carefully, he realized that he did recognize the colors and textures. He’d spent endless hours in candy stores and even more hours in the streets outside their windows, longingly staring at candy he couldn’t buy, memorizing every detail of the boiled sweets so he could lie in bed at night and imagine that he was holding one in his hand, looking at it, feeling it, smelling it, and finally popping it in his mouth. 

And now he could see those sweets again, far bigger but easily recognizable. He saw the unmistakable amber-brown and white stripes of humbugs. He saw the powdery surface and pale yellow coloring of acid drops. He saw the nubbly texture and brighter yellow of sherbet lemons, and the sugar dusting and white stripes of lemonade fizzballs. He saw the smooth shiny mahogany of aniseed balls, the pale gleaming green of soor plooms, the red and yellow of rhubarb and custard pips, the swirled pink-brown-purple of dandelion and burdock sweets, the pink and yellow of pear drops, and the white-flecked pastels of fizzy wizzy balls.

Confident at last, Charlie pointed at the boats, and named every single one. 

“Correct!” Mr. Wonka did a little dance of joy, clicking his polished heels together and waving his gold-topped cane. “Perfect! Excellent! Couldn’t have done better myself!” 

Charlie gave a sigh of happiness. It was the deep sort of happiness that feels, strangely, a little bit like sadness. It’s the feeling you get when you’ve gotten everything you’ve ever dreamed of, and it’s even better than you imagined it would be – when everything is so wonderful that you can’t quite believe that it’s real.

“And now, Charlie, it’s time for you to invent a candy,” Mr. Wonka declared. “My factory is yours now. All you need to do is think of something, and I can teach you how to make it real.”

Charlie hadn’t thought of it before, but he now realized that of course, if he was going to take over Mr. Wonka’s factory, he’d need to invent new candy, just like Mr. Wonka did. But Mr. Wonka had thousands and thousands of different types of candy. He must invent new ones every day. Charlie couldn’t believe that he could think of anything that Mr. Wonka hadn’t already invented. 

Impatiently, Mr. Wonka urged him, “Come on! Spit it out! Something wonderful! Something amazing! Something no one’s ever thought of before… except _you,_ Charlie. What candy did you dream of, when you were lying in bed at night?”

Mostly Charlie had dreamed of candy he’d already had and loved, like Wonka’s Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight, or candy he’d seen but never tried, like Wonka’s Perfectilicious Peppermint Pops. But sometimes he’d imagined other things…

“What about a candy you can put anywhere in the house, and when you’ve already gone to bed and it’s too cold for you to want to put your feet on the floor, or the rest of your family is already asleep on the floor and you don’t want to step on them and wake them up, but you really wish you had that candy, you can just snap your fingers and it’ll fly into your hand?”

Mr. Wonka’s elfin face split into an immensely wide grin of delight. “Yes! Wonderful! Boomerang candy for cold nights and lazy days! You’re brilliant, Charlie. That’s something I never thought of… but you did! Let’s go make it, right now!”

Thrilled, Charlie followed Mr. Wonka back into the glass elevator. 

“But how does it work?” Charlie asked. “I remember the Inventing Room, but how do you go from just having an idea to building a machine that can actually create it?”

“You’ll see, Charlie. You’ll see.” With a brilliant gleam in his eyes, Mr. Wonka reached for a button labeled THE POSSIBILITY ROOM. “Just wait! I promise you, it’s more wonderful and amazing and surprising than anything you can imagine!”

And it was.


End file.
